Lan and Rachel talked long into the night. Their conversations weren't about anything important or even memorable. It was more the company that they both enjoyed. For a long time now, Rachel had suffered from isolation and Lan never really got to hang out with kids his age.
It was nice, just chatting with someone who was happy to listen. Lan hadn’t had anyone he could talk to since the old cook that hired him had quit. The old man was getting on in years and wanted to retire to take care of his family. It was only after he left that Lan realised how much the old man really meant to him.
He had been about 12 when they first met. Shivering in a torn sleeping bag, pressed up against the wall of the hotel roof. Lan was sure he must have looked more like a drowned rat than a human, but the old man never seemed to care.
Lan remembered hearing the footsteps close in his hiding place, his heart had been in his mouth, but he was too tired and too cold to move or run. He had sat there helplessly as an old, bearded face poked around the corner of the stairwell, a half-smoked cigarette still in his mouth.
The pair didn’t exchange any words, the old man simply finished his cigarette and left. Returning moments later with a hot water bottle and a flask full of warm soup.
To this day, it was the nicest food Lan had ever eaten, and he doubted anything could ever top it. Nothing beats hunger as a seasoning.
Shortly after, Lan started working as a bellhop for the hotel, all on the recommendation of the cook. He owed that man his life. Without his kindness, Lan would have died long ago, frozen to death on the cold streets of the District.
That night, after Rachel had left, Lan dreamed of the cook and the hotel roof where his life had changed. He dreamt of the hours he spent late after his shift ended, helping the old man clean the kitchen, just to spend time with him. And when he woke up, a tear ran down his face, as his last memory of the old man drifted by elusively.
Lan was 16 when the old man retired. He had never found out the cook's exact age but, the man was far too old to still be working. Lan half suspected that the old man had only stayed at the hotel to keep an eye on him.
But eventually, his back hurt too much, his feet ached, and his hip creaked. Age and a life spent without rest got the best of the old man and on a clear autumn afternoon, as golden leaves tumbled from dying trees, the old man walked out of the hotel for the final time.
His final words to Lan were, ‘Good luck kid, you’re stronger than you know. So don’t let the world hold you down… keep your head up,’
Since then, Lan had tried his best to live up to those expectations. On the nights when his belly ached from hunger, or a difficult customer had taken their anger out on him, as he lay bruised and alone in his tiny room, Lan dreamed big. He dreamt of the day he could hold the world down and lift all the kids like him up from poverty and loneliness.
And it all started here. On the bridge.
Lan clambered out of bed, skilfully dodging the spiked bits of metal sticking out through the battered mattress. Fool me once as they say.
Hunger pangs hit him like a freight train, and he realised he hadn’t eaten since arriving at the tutorial.
‘I suppose I did die a few times, so maybe that reset my hunger, but at the very least, I haven’t eaten since yesterday,’
He was used to going long periods without eating, but that didn’t mean he wanted to. For a moment, he considered killing himself so that he could avoid eating altogether, but he quickly stopped thinking like that.
‘I don’t think I should view death so casually, if I do… It will become all too easy for me to kill other people without a second thought… Even when I’m not on the bridge,’ Lan warned himself
The more time he spent here, the more he was beginning to understand why his parents were killed. Or what drove that man to do it anyway. It was simply a complete lack of regard for life itself. If death meant nothing to you, after a while, life would lose any meaning.
Lan decided to check out the town first, hoping to find some food there. The second he opened his front door, acrid smoke billowed in.
“Is the town on fire?” He coughed, covering his eyes as he ploughed through the putrid cloud of smoke that reeked of blood and burnt meat.
“But who would be stupid enough to light the town on fire right before a beast wave? If this place gets destroyed, we all fail,”
After walking for what felt like hours, he stumbled out of the smoke, heaving breaths of fresh air. Now that he was out of the cloud, he could see that it wasn’t the town itself that was on fire, but the massive pile of beast corpses that had only grown since yesterday.
‘Looks like someone had the same idea as me… I just wish they had moved the pyre further away so that my hut doesn’t smell like shit,’
He looked around and found himself in the town square, an empty dirt field in the middle of some of the nicer huts.
At its centre stood a huge, bronze gong and surrounding that, men and women stood beside enormous cast iron cauldrons. They stirred them with long wooden ladles, sweating from the heat the boiling liquid within gave off.
On the far side of the town square, many pathfinders were gathered, eyeing the cooks with open distrust and hatred.
Lan looked over at the group and glimpsed the top of a shaved white head, ‘That should be Morgan,’
He made his way across the square, catching the pungent smell of the broth in the cauldrons. His stomach growled hungrily but he ignored it, striding over to where Morgan stood.
Now that he was closer, he could spot Morgan in the crowd more clearly. They were standing beside a tall man with short, tightly cropped brown hair and bulging muscles that threatened to burst through his robe.
“Morgan!” Lan shouted over the din.
They looked over at him, their eyes widening slightly. “Lan, where have you been?”
Lan arrived beside the pair, shrugging, “Oh you know, here and there. I managed to beat the first step yesterday but other than that, nothing much has happened,”
Morgan’s eyes widened, “Wow! Only like 600 people have managed that so far, congratulations!”
“Only 600? That sounds like quite a lot,” Lan pointed out.
“Yeah, well that is a lot of people, but there’s 10000 of us, so the fact that it’s the third day and only 600 have passed is a bit worrying… honestly I’m not sure if I’ll even get the chance to attempt it before the 30 days are up,” Morgan looked glum when they finished.
Lan frowned, “Is it really that hard to get in?”
“Oh yeah, me and Luke went this morning,” Morgan gestured to the tall boy beside them, “But there were over 1000 people in the queue,”
“How does the queue even work? When I went it said there were 67/100 people in the first step,”
Morgan eyed Lan suspiciously, “I’m not sure when you went for there to be that few people, but basically when you step onto the platform that the first step is on, you can go and register a place in the queue by touching the wall,”
“Why not just do that and then go hunt in the forest for a while?”
Morgan sighed, “Yeah, I wish, but the problem is, you lose your place in the queue the second you step off the platform. It’s a real nightmare for some of the weaker kids here. I saw this one girl get to the front of the queue, but she had a disagreement with this ex-boyfriend, right? So, when he found out it was almost her turn, he grabbed her and threw her off the platform,”
“Shit! That’s terrible,” Lan could imagine just how pissed that girl would be after.
“Well, she did kill him a bunch of times after to release her anger, but the damage was done,”
“Wow, it’s tough out here,” Lan shook his head sadly, “But anyway, what’s going on with those cauldrons? I’m starving but since I saw nobody was eating… I thought I should see what the problem was first,”
“You know what happened yesterday with the crafters right?”
“Crafters…” The boy called Luke, who hadn’t spoken until now growled, rubbing his neck as though a wound was still there.
“Yeah, they turned on everyone after the beast wave ended,” Lan nodded, glad Rachel had gotten him caught up last night. “I noticed you’re in a robe now, did they get you?” Lan asked Morgan, who was no longer wearing a school uniform, and instead an ill-fitting beige robe.
“They got me alright,” Morgan shuddered slightly, “Shot an arrow right through my back,”
“Jesus, I’m sorry,”
“Nah it’s ok, at least I died quickly since they hit my heart. Luke…”
Lan looked up at Luke who practically had a thundercloud hovering above his head. The boy was looking at the cooks how a wolf looks at rabbits.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
“Luke didn’t succumb to his wounds for hours,”
“Well, that sucks and all, but I haven’t eaten since yesterday so… I might have to forgive them,” Besides, Lan hadn’t even been there when the betrayal happened.
“Forgive them… I’d rather eat glass than their food. Those scumbags probably poisoned it,” Luke spat.
“Either I’ll eat some food and stop being hungry, or I’ll get poisoned, die, and stop being hungry,” Lan said with a grin, trying to lighten the mood.
The mood was not lightened. Luke looked at Lan as though he had just tried to defend Hitler and Morgan kept making a shushing motion, as though they were begging Lan to stop.
“Okay, my bad. It’s not funny I guess,” Lan muttered. “But if no one is going to eat their food, then why are we all gathered here?”
“In case they try something,” Luke grunted, staring intently at the cooks.
“Okay…” Lan trailed off, not sure what to do in this situation. He was still hungry after all. And he was almost 100% sure the food wouldn’t be poisoned. The second a single person dropped dead after eating it, the cooks would be swarmed by the angry mob just beside them, so they had no reason to do anything as stupid as poisoning people.
Lan sighed helplessly, “I’m going to go check out the queue for the second step, I’ll see you guys later,”
He waved goodbye to Morgan and Luke and slipped into the crowd. Flipping up his hood, Lan doubled back and walked straight to the nearest cauldron.
‘Hopefully, Morgan won’t recognise me,’ Lan thought to himself as he neared the cauldron. He didn't care about any betrayals... at least he didn't care about betrayal more than he cared about food.
A short girl with strong forearms and bright red hair stirred the cauldron furiously. She wore a white apron covered in stains and her concentration on the broth she was making was absolute.
“Hi,” Lan spoke up.
The girl jumped back, so startled she nearly dropped the ladle into her cauldron. “Hi, would you like some food?”
“Yeah, do you mind? I don’t have a bowl or anything though,”
“No worries, I’ve got plenty here,” The girl bent down and grabbed a roughly carved wooden bowl from beside the cauldron.
As Lan left the square, he felt the angry gazes of the gathered pathfinders burning holes into the back of his neck. To make a show of it, he tipped the bowl of broth back, drinking the whole thing in front of the spectators.
When he didn’t die, there was actually a murmur of disappointment. ‘Why the hell would you be sad that someone wasn’t trying to poison you?’ Lan wondered, not quite believing how dumb these guys were. He supposed they were just looking for an excuse to fight.
He left the square and headed towards the path. He was planning on challenging the second step during the next beast wave, but not before he gave Cece a piece of his mind.
While walking towards the entrance hall, it occurred to him that he had never actually gone there intentionally. Every time he had ended up there was because he had died.
For some reason, this made going to the hall by his own will feel strange and out of place. It felt like putting milk in the bowl before the cereal. It just wasn’t the way things were done.
Still, he arrived at the leader board in a matter of minutes, walking incredibly fast thanks to his now 28 agility, his walking speed was like sprinting for a normal person, and if he tried running, he could probably outpace a cheetah at this point.
He took a look at the leaderboard, finding his name within the top 3000 for points.
Unknown – 100
‘I need to get my name sorted out,’ Lan decided, running through some of the ideas he had come up with. But all the names he could think of were either too pretentious or embarrassing. He didn’t want to blush in shame every time he introduced himself to someone.
Caught in his own thoughts, he strolled towards the entrance of the hall, weaving through the hundreds of pathfinders that poured in and out of the hall’s entrance at all times.
“Hey!” A person grabbed his shoulder, stopping him in his tracks.
Lan whirled around, ready to fight, only to find a skinny young man with inhuman eyes. He had long brown hair tied back in a bun and wore the same robe as everyone else. His appearance would have been fairly forgettable, if not for those eyes.
They were completely black, with golden lines that ran in a grid across their surface. They looked more like the compound eyes of a spider or fly than a human.
“Jesus Christ, what the hell is wrong with your eyes?” Lan hissed, slapping the boy’s hand away from his shoulder.
“Ouch, that hurts,” The boy acted like he had been struck by a great blow, clutching his chest in agony.
Lan rolled his eyes at the over-the-top performance, “Alright, alright, I get it. My bad, what do you want?”
The boy straightened his back, and put his arm around Lan’s shoulder, guiding him through the crowd to the side of the door by the hall’s entrance. Here they could see everyone who entered or exited the hall without being in the way.
Lan looked the boy up and down, trying to figure out what he wanted.
Ignoring Lan’s open confusion, the boy placed his hand around Lan’s neck, leaning in conspiratorially. From the outside, the pair must have looked like they were exchanging a great secret, but when Lan heard what the boy had to say, he was sure everyone who saw them would be disappointed.
“How many babies?” The boy whispered.
“Huh?” Lan responded. It was more of a sound than a word since he was too stunned to form such things.
“How man babies do you think you could beat in a fight?” The boy asked, his face a mask of seriousness.
“What- what the fuck are you talking about?” Lan stuttered, not believing what he was hearing.
“Listen, I’m serious. Have you never asked yourself ‘How many babies could I beat up at once? Like if they swarmed you,’ Most people get cocky and say, infinite babies, I mean they are only babies, right?”
“Okay…” Lan tried to back away, but the boy was holding his shoulder tightly, his spider eyes creepily watching him like a fly trapped in his web.
“Wrong, eventually you would get tired. The endless wave of babies attacking you would overwhelm even the strongest fighter until they lost. Which is to say, everyone has a specific number of babies that they could beat,”
“I don’t understand why you’re telling me this,” Lan answered honestly, too confused to lie.
“I’m telling you because I can see how strong someone is with these eyes of mine. That girl over there,” The boy gestured to a girl leaving the hall, still wearing a school uniform. That was a rare sight these days and usually meant one of two things. She was very strong, or very lucky.
“She could fight 3000 babies, maybe 3500 at a push,”
“And…?” Lan thought this was a kind of grotesque way to measure strength.
“You can do more than that. A lot more. Out of everyone I’ve seen leaving and exiting the hall today, you look like one of the strongest,”
“Are you saying you can see my stats?” Lan asked cautiously, forcefully untangling the boy’s arm from around his neck but not letting go of his wrist.
“Not the exact stat distribution, I can only see the rough total number of stats. You already have the total stats of someone near level 10, so either, you have a lot of titles, or are already insanely high leveleld,” The boy grinned predatorily as he spoke.
Lan frowned, not liking the way the boy looked at him, “What does it matter? And what has anything got to do with the number of babies I could beat in a fight?” He grabbed the boy’s robe and dragged him closer, glaring into those inhuman eyes.
“It matters because I need someone strong to join a little group I’ve been putting together.” The boy completely disregarded Lan’s anger and forged ahead.
“Ha! And why would I join your shit little group? You seem fucking mental!"
The boy smiled widely, revealing slightly pointed teeth, “You’d join because it will help you pass the third trial….”
He left the end of his sentence hanging, like a guillotine over Lan’s neck. “Are you serious…?” Lan replied after a long pause.
“Completely,” the boy replied calmly.
Lan took a deep breath and let the boy down gently, brushing imaginary dust from the lapels of his robe. “Why didn’t you say so earlier? I'll never turn down a free lunch,”
The boy laughed at Lan’s switch in tone and handed him a slip of paper. “Read this and then burn it. We’ll meet here tonight, and I’ll tell you the details.”
Lan nodded, stowing the slip of paper in his robes. When he looked back up, the boy was gone, vanishing into the crowd that continuously entered and exited the hall.
Shaking his head, Lan still couldn’t quite believe what had just happened. ‘What a creep,’ he thought to himself as he walked into the hall, making a beeline for Cece’s stall.
She wasn’t there, and neither was the man who had been on the pillar beside hers. Instead, two new stalls had sprouted up here overnight.
Lan stared at the stall labelled, McKnight's special investigations. Not quite believing what he was seeing.
He turned his head, examining the rest of the hall to see if he was in the right spot. And what he found was that besides the bigger factions near the centre, many of the pillars had changed owners.
“Excuse me,” Lan walked over to the pillar that Cece had been on.
The lady on the pillar looked at him coldly, “How can I help you?” From her tone of voice, it was clear she didn’t want to be there.
“Sorry to bother you, I was just wondering if you knew what happened to the person who used to run this stall,” Lan asked, trying to be as polite as possible.
The lady sighed, as though she had been asked this question a lot already, “Oh that… the smaller pillars are for rent and they aren’t cheap either, so once a recruiter finds enough people who are suitable for them, they usually give up their spot here and move on to another tutorial,”
“There are other tutorials?” Lan asked curiously.
Rolling her eyes, the lady replied curtly, “Of course there are, did you think your little planet was special? The bridge has ports all over the universe,”
Lan nodded gratefully. He still had a lot of questions but could tell the woman was sick of answering them. In any case, he was definitely not going to work for her.
For the next few hours, he decided to drift around the entrance hall, asking probing questions about the bridge while he read over many other contracts.
Lan found that once he revealed he had already passed the first step, most recruiters were more than happy to tell him a bit about their organization and offer him a deal. Although he was yet to see a contract as good as Cece’s.
Every contract he had been shown so far had lacked one key thing, and that was freedom. For example, he had just finished rejecting a mining company that wanted pathfinders to protect their miners from the beasts that roamed the caves they worked in.
The pay wasn’t terrible, and he would even get to keep some of the minerals the miners gathered, but if he signed this contract, he would have to live on-site with them for 20 years.
Seeing as Lan wasn’t even 20 years old, that much time was unfathomable to him. And no matter how good the contract was, he simply couldn’t accept those terms.
Many other contracts he was shown were similarly restricting. A private army wanted him to live on base for 50 years, a hotel wanted him to act as a porter for high-level pathfinders, living as little more than a mule for 30 years. Even hospitals that needed paramedics to rush into dangerous regions on the bridge only offered really good healthcare plans as their big incentive.
‘I hadn’t really thought about how society on the bridge would work, but it seems like the threat of monsters attacking is prevalent no matter where you go. I’m guessing the crafters have more varied job offers, but no matter where I work, I’m going to end up being the muscle,’
Honestly, Lan was tempted to just not get a job at all, but the threat of the academies finding out he had sneaked on with them loomed over him. He really needed a backer and so far, Cece was the only backer he had found that looked any good.
The problem then, was that he needed to somehow reach the eighth step. The first one had already been incredibly difficult, so he could only imagine what the rest would be like.
And imagination was truly his only option, because matter who he asked, none of the recruiters gave him any useful information. There seemed to almost be an embargo of sorts on the sheer steps. Where no one outside of the tutorial could talk about them.
‘That guy from earlier should definitely know a thing or two,’ Lan thought, feeling the slip of paper still in his pocket.
He pulled it out, unfolded it and began to read. He couldn’t tell if it was being intentionally cryptic or if whoever wrote this had done so during an earthquake because the handwriting could be called chicken scratch at best.
Still, he managed to figure out roughly where he was supposed to show up and stuffed the slip of paper back in his pocket.
The boy had told Lan to meet him there by nightfall and by now it was barely noon. ‘The beast wave usually shows up around now, so maybe I should give the second step a go. From what I’ve been able to gather this next one shouldn’t take too long,’
Lan started walking towards the sheer steps, joining a growing procession of combatants that were streaming towards the town.
Barely suppressed violence pervaded the air. A lot of these pathfinders had been killed by the crafters yesterday and were looking forward to relieving their anger on the unsuspecting beasts.
Lan almost felt bad for the next beast wave… almost.